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by corrinenichols
Summary: Link and Zelda grow together in a second life given to them by the Ocarina of Time, to what end? Avoidance and acceptance of obligations and expectations. Mostly smut.


This is a not quite a short story/not quite anything. I'm tired of looking for a few themes/ideas about which I want to read, but don't seem to be there. So I wrote something (stupid), in case someone shares my plight. Please compare to "**The Horror of 5 Min, Unoriginal Zelda Romance Fics** ", by Candy. I bow to her.

I don't own anything.

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He had returned to her, once again 7 years old.

They both remembered. They remembered Navi and Sheik, the sages, and Ganon. They remembered how the neons of the flowers surrounding them in the place garden had rotted under a sickened sky before falling into a risen pool of magma when the decaying ground disintegrated beneath the castle claimed by Ganondorf.

They remembered each other.

And so they clung to each other, for it was only them in Hyrule who remembered, and as horrible as the knowledge they had was, they did not want to forget. They did not want to remember the atrocities; they wanted to remember the threat. And, secretly, they wanted to remember their longing for each other that gave them a light of hope in that dark time.

15 years passed and they aged in this second life.

Link would come and go, a lost child, but one who sought and acquired many friends. He returned to the Kokiri, but only as a visitor. He spent much of his time with the Sheikah, learning, though his wander lust sporadically pulled him away. He knew the Gorons and the Zora well, even the Gerudo had welcomed him into their realm until he reached puberty, though he was still permitted to attend solstice festivities in the fortress. He had reacquired Epona and took her with him. But Zelda was his home. He always returned to her, bearing gifts of cultural significance of the places he had gone to.

She envied him, being locked away in the palace. But she contented herself with the infinite stream of books the library offered to her, and the lessons Impa would teach. She taught Link many things when he came, him always being so eager to learn from her.

Curiously, she had always had seven more years of knowledge than him due to his wasted time spent slumbering in the Temple of Time. But he never seemed to be more the child of the two. They met evenly, perhaps not in wisdom—him frequently being rash and impulsive—but in maturity. It was as if they were both immortal beings, and the amount of time they lived and learned in this life was irrelevant. They might have been continually forced to repeat life cycles, born without concrete knowledge, but possessing an build-up of inherent understanding of things; they were old souls in young bodies.

Their friendship was always based on ageless love, through platonic for most of their youth.

They first touched each other's naked bodies when they were seventeen. Link led her to an archer's tower, the highest one with too many steps for the lazy guards to climb, and spoke to her about his childhood, in the life before, among the Kokiri. He told her that when he went to the castle, to her, for the first time, she was the first person to ever treat him as if he were not some strange anomaly. The Kokiri, though they befriended and adopted him, always regarded him as something peculiar, absolutely abnormal. He loved her as soon as she treated him not only as normal, but as her equal. Then Zelda told him she loved him ever since she threw that ocarina to him that night by the bridge; he was her sun in that darkened world, she cherished him, and he never disappointed her. But she said that there was one exception. He asked what it was and she told him she was disappointed that he had never truly demonstrated his love to her physically. So he experimented with a kiss and then took her invitation.

Afterwards, she could not swallow the delicious aftertaste of his mouth, and she could never forget it. If she thought of it she could feel him in her; the way he swung into her, reaching for her the way his eyes could but his hands could not. He wanted invisible, intangible things inside of her, and she loved him for that.

Over time they learned each other's bodies deliberately, but with an instinctual understanding of where to touch and how. It was as if they already knew, but were just remembering.

Link began to stay with her more often after their sexuality had been initiated, but always in secrecy.

Their relationship would never be publicly announced. It would never be properly, publicly consummated. He never wanted a life constrained by the social obligation inherent in hers. He only wanted her. She understood and respected that. When the time came for her to consider suitors, she never reciprocated interest and refused requests. She was known as the perpetual virgin, and by 25, she was publicly regarded as a frigid, hopeless case determined to keep the crown to herself.

She laughed at that idea quietly as she lay in bed with Link one morning. He had his lips pressed to the side of her ribs, listening to her talk about the political arena of she she was part while she pulled her fingers through his hair.

"It's incredible that no one knows you come to me. People are so blind."

"Don't say that about people" he replied "just flatter me by marveling my stealth."

She laughed, her voice the sound of a brooke, her smell like parsley and apple. Link smelt more like pine bark and grassy soil.

"I am impressed that you have never been caught sneaking around the palace in all these years. You must have been here thousands of times."

"Good, one ought to be impressed by my talent."

"I am not impressed by your conceit."

"Zelda, how could you believe that I am in any way conceited?"

She laughed at his playful bemusement which carried a degree of truth, "I know you're not. You care nothing about being the Hero of Time, you have no desire the be my King, and you hide the triforce on your hand under a glove."

His face hardened with solemn humility. He was silent for a moment, "Do you want me to marry you? To live in the public realm with you?" His hesitant voice exposed shame and culpability of fault.

Zelda mimicked his thoughtful silence before her response, "No, I still have you; you're here and that is enough. Otherwise, you do not want to be a king; you do not want that life. You would be unhappy, and as so, you would not be a good ruler."

"Bluntly put."

"Would you have it any other way?"

Link pushed himself up with on pale arm, exhaled noticeably, and pushed his hair our of his face with the hand of the other. "No, I do prefer the truth." He looked away from her, instead focusing on the space of sheet and mattress between them. Zelda continued to watch his expression, willing him to hear well what she would now say.

"Link, there is also this: I'd rather my lover not be forced to live the life I must endure; I wish you the freedom that I am unwilling to resign my duties to pursue."

He sat up and laid his back against the grandiose headboard, she mirrored him. After some time he looked at her, and spoke, "I don't like that, I feel so much guilt knowing that you're living the life that I so intently evade." then returned his gaze to the white cloth.

"But it is my choice to live this life. I could leave. But I do not feel that I have made a sufficient contribution to Hyrule."

"Well then I certainly haven't." Now he looked away completely, to the open window on his side of the room.

"Link, you defeated Ganondorf." She touched his right collar bone as she said this, he did not avoid the touch, but he tensed underneath it, ready to push her away.

"But only with your help."

"I sat seven years, completely inutile against him."

"If it weren't for you, as both Zelda and Sheik, I would have had no idea what to do."

"You don't give yourself any credit. You unraveled knots of mystery I didn't even know existed. Regardless, like I said, I had done nothing to weaken Ganondorf over the course of more than seven years except provide some insight to you. You had defeated in him in just a few short months. You saved us all, Link."

"Well, just a few _short _months is very little in comparison to a lifetime of service." He returned his gaze to her, looking into her directly with such intensity it seared something somewhere inside her head. But she knew he did not mean to be aggressive. Only, when he spoke truthfully his honesty and the passion behind his thoughts was as potent as his physical power.

"Link, I just want you to be happy. I still blame myself for everything. I deserve this life, it is my way of atonement."

"Zelda, you said yourself that you were to young too comprehend the consequences of your actions. How can you blame yourself?"

"Link, in that life, I was so innocent, unexperienced, and in my inexperience I was ignorant and greedy. I wanted to rule Hyrule, and I wanted to be the most powerful princess and eventual queen in its history. I _was _conceited, and I thought that I could defeat Ganondorf myself."

"Zelda, you may have behaved that way once, but you no longer do. Why must you condemn yourself to this life?"

A subdued glare of fire finally erupted within Zelda, escaping from her mouth as words and from her eyes in her stare.

"What would you have me do Link? Abandon the responsibility that was given to me?" Electric frustration crackled in her eyes.

"Are you suggesting that by living my lifestyle you would be abandoning Hyrule?" He matched her, more temperate, but resolute in his ardent pose.

"Yes."

"So what does that make me?" His voice carried both accusation and resign. And it pierced her; she fell from her combative height, and would had succeeded the argument, but collected herself to return with more grace.

"It makes nothing else of you that you are not already. Link, you are a wanderer. You have called yourself the lost boy. I agree that you have no physical home. You were born with no obligations. But you would do anything to protect the people I am prepared to serve. I think that that is enough."

Silence lingered while link considered this. He did not speak for some time, but finally turned to her and said, "You're wrong. My home is with you."

Zelda, whose face was placid, reached to draw a circle on the back of Link's hand, which rested on his leg. He took her hand in his and kissed the palm, then the tip of each finger. Zelda moved to press her lips against his shoulder, but he caught her face in his other hand and held it so that he could kiss her lips, but before he did so he smiled at her. His smile touched the pool of her face like tangible light, and then in hers sunshine shone.

He kissed her with force. And she reciprocated.

Their fingers strode along each others bodies, sliding over the curves, ever further downwards.

She touched him, circling her hand around it and pulsing her fingers lightly. It was such a unique feeling: touching him. Nothing could compare to Link's body, knowing she was the only person to have ever seen and felt it. More so, the body belonged to the man who had saved her, but also a man who she knew valued her more than any other being in his life. To simply touch him was one of the most satisfying experiences she knew.

He reached down and into her, sweeping inside her briefly before bringing his finger to his lips, which enclosed over it.

She repositioned herself, twisting up and around. She enveloped his sex with her mouth and, simultaneously, he covered hers, stroking it with his toncue. Panting, they sought ecstasy for each other. They both received it.

When her orgasm came, he stopped, and waited for her quivering to cease.

When she was still she laid back from him, allowing him to spin and pull her underneath him, covering her with his musk and twilight. She exhaled her happiness in the most gentle laughter. He responded with the softest hum deep within his throat.

She was so lithe, feline, and like a vine she binded herself to him with her delicate limbs, and pressed her self unto him as he penetrated her.

She watched his eyes as they embraced her and sought her thoughts, with more poignancy than his body reaching into hers. She did not close her eyes, but watched him. As deliberate, but casual smile exposing her satisfaction with the moment. She rocked beneath him, setting the curling stream of motion.

They swung together, balanced upon the mattress. He moved within her mind as wind, casting her thoughts off balance, flying away to disappear in the harsh morning light.. And to him her body had the magnificence of the all mountains and the ocean or the world; of all the beauty he had seen, she overwhelmed him most. Just her presence instilled in his veins the sensation of warm honey, but this, here, intoxicated him. He could think of nothing else but the ravishing euphoria bleeding inward into his body, which flowed from her.

Deviations in momentum, position and pace gave them opportunity for air and brief, ardent whisperings composed of more breath than voice, or quick statements eliciting flutters of laughter.

Over and over again she climaxed. Each time he felt each of her gentle vibrations around himself and he thought them more pleasant than his own pounding, numbing tremors and would be permitted when she signaled. But never could their hands grasp enough of each other. Seeking to satisfy the inexplicable need to wholly, utterly combine their bodies into one, fluid, dancing being.

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End file.
